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My nephews, 6 and 9, started building with Lego some four years ago. They started and never let it go. Till date, their eyes sparkle at the sight of Lego. Some new Lego on the block, is always on their wish-list, and all their earned points at home go towards procuring more Lego sets. Their house is full of the most outlandish Lego creatures, which the boys nurture with utmost possessiveness. Afterall those multi limbed rocket propelling outrageously ugly creations with lighted noses or whirring eyes, have each been created by a persistent toddler, bent over a copious amount of instructions, piecing together one brick at a time, for durations of time that could be considered mini-lifetimes for these kids! And then, just when it was high-time, Lego introduced a whole series of building sets with more 'feminine' themes---like friendship and fun, aimed precisely for the little girls. And just as it should have been, the aunt of my kids---the lady with two Lego fanatic boys, prese…

It happened on the spur of the moment. I was browsing for a new book to read. I came across a book review on the Times or the Post, I forget, and I liked what I read about the book. I wanted a book to read so badly, that I just had to do it. I went on Amazon.com, and gave that defining peck on the keyboard. I had bought my first Kindle book.

The book was mine now. The device Kindle was surprisingly home, and not at work with hubby. So, I grabbed the reader, planted myself on the sofa with my feet tucked under me, and began to read. The kids were asleep, the afternoon sun kissing the room was lovely, and the book was absolutely to its promise. I did not put down the e-reader at all! At night, when all the lights in the house went down, I still wanted to read, even while the kids slept next to me. And I did, in the illumination of the i-pad this time. When I first picked the i-pad, the software even asked me, if it wanted me to start the book from the beginning, or from the page that I…

Anu Garg's Daily-word mail always ends with a quote, and usually these quotes are absolutely fantastic---simple and truly pearls of wisdom, without the sermons. I try to make that mail one of the first things to read, and of course read it from top to bottom, savoring the end quote throughout the day. Today's was just as poetically lovely:

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. -Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892)

This used to be so true for most of us in the bygone days....me in particular, would sit with my warm glass of water, and look out at the greenery, or at the sky or at anything that was outside my house, outside my mundane existence, and that which was full of fresh air. Even with the glass windows shut tight, I inhaled a freshness through my eyes and my ears. I was perhaps still but not lifeless. I was filling my limbs with my share of the undivided nature. Today, I often do check the measurements of nature in the morning, before ste…

I am going to keep adding to this list as and when a title crosses my eyes, and publish it here, so that I am openly challenged by myself to get to these books some day: Something of Myself----R.KiplingAny book by Joan Didion

This is to establish, for all times to come, that my littlest kid has touched my heart in just as many unexpected and beautiful ways as my older kid has. I don't write a lot about her (have long stopped the logging of a weekly journal on child, and neither do I blog often about her here), but this does NOT mean that she is less enjoyable or less loved by any means.

She evokes poetry in me, just like the older one did, but most often those moments of poetry are super swamped by moments of chasing the older one with fruits to eat, and keeping away Cheerios for fear of overdozing from the younger one. I wish I had a dictaphone on me all the time, to record the sheer sweetness that this little person's antics flood me with, but then I wonder if amidst the shrill cries of resentment being voiced by older one as the little one matter-of-factly destroys yet another of her Barbie set-ups, any of my soliloquies would get recorded at all. Their trivial fights and accompanying displays o…

I guess this is what they call 'divine intervention'. Starbucks and me had become such close pals, one of their paper-cups held in my hand so certainly most of the time, as to appear an extension of my arm that my husband would often suggest we buy shares of the coffee-company, since the company's value could never go down with loyalists like myself. And to think that I picked up drinking coffee just some ten or so odd years back, when I came to this country as a graduate student? Until then, I was all about tea only. Anyhow, so the bottom line is that I was a S.bucks coffee addict--every time I stepped out of the house (this habit was only fueled by the fact that there is a thriving (aren't they all?), bubbling, bustling and of course brewing Starbucks just outside my building). Mind you--it wasn't just any coffee---it was typically S.Bucks.

And then, out of the blue around the end of last summer, I began to lose my singing voice (yes, I believed, I was an OK croo…